Monday, December 19, 2011

From Exposure to Action- A New Turn in the Occupy Movement

When the history books are written, this winter may be the remembered at the time when Occupy Wall Street moved from the exposure of the economic system's inequities to the active defense of the disfranchised. The actions taken to prevent evictions and foreclosures in Brooklyn to Atlanta show the potential of OWS to renegotiate the social contract for people who have lost their homes. The same thing can eventually be done for people who can't pay their student loans. The Eviction of the Occupiers has given the movement a priceless opportunity to help people fight back against impoverishment and marginalization. By next year, there may be thousands of once empty, now occupied homes and apartments throughout this country. There won't be enough police to evict them. And if that happens, local governments may declare this occupations "legal" as they did in Berlin after the fall of the wall, when artists from all over Germany and all over the world occupied abandoned space in the former "Eastern Zone" of the city!

1 comment:

It's an interesting idea. I can't count how many stories I've read about the banks refusing to negotiate with home owners and then selling the homes for minute fractions of the original worth. That said, squatters squat now and from what I've seen in NJ no one really bothers them, some even have utilities hooked up. I'm not sure what the process is for evicting them, but there must be a process otherwise, I assume, they'd have been forced to leave by now.

About Me

Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African-American History, urban history, and the history of sports.
The Bronx African-American History Project, Dr Naison's most recent venture, was launched collaboratively with the Bronx Historical Society in the Fall of 2002 . Since that time, Dr Naison has conducted over one hundred and fifty interviews with African-American professionals, community activists, business leaders and musicians who grew up in Bronx between the 1930's and the 1980's. . Naison is currently working on two books related to the BAAHP, a collection of oral histories and a memoir written by Allen Jones entitled "The Rat That Got Away."
When not doing historical research, Naison likes to play tennis, golf and basketball, and make periodic forays into the media. He has appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, the Discovery Channel's Greatest American Competition (as Dr King's advocate), and on the Dave Chappell Show, where his "performance" has been preserved on that show's Second Year DVD.